While effective management has many sub-elements, one of the areas managers struggle with most is undoubtedly emotion management. In today's increasingly complex and routinized internal relationships, emotion management emerges as an important source of social capital and synergy. We are talking about a concept that aims to ensure employees feel safe at the workplace and engage in positive social interactions. It should not be forgotten that an employee who feels safe at the workplace, takes pride in being part of the culture, shares knowledge, and is participative and creative can be an employee who uses their potential to the maximum and thus benefits the organization.

So who bears the most important duty at this point? Even though employees and the organization's climate are among the factors affecting emotion management, the most important factor influencing emotion management in businesses is undoubtedly the manager. Managers who gain experience mostly in technical and job-related qualities can remain ineffective when it comes to human relations and emotion management. Yet leaders' management philosophy, leadership style, form of authority and attitudes toward individuals are the most important element in the formation of a positive or negative atmosphere in workplaces. A manager's failure to be sufficiently effective, with empathy, in the face of employees' emotions, feelings and expectations, and inadequate social interactions, can produce unwanted results for both sides. What are these unwanted results? Insufficient and ineffective rewarding, managers being unable to perceive themselves as a team together with their employees, failing to sufficiently win employees' trust, perceiving management only as their own area of responsibility... We could extend this list further and further.

Research shows that your emotional approaches, and the way you reflect them in management, come back to you and your company as plus or minus points. If you are a commanding leader, you are very likely to see routinized and bored employees and stressed, reactive behavior. If you are a democratic leader, you will have conciliatory employees inclined toward teamwork. If you embrace management with a visionary leadership approach, you will have employees who believe in change and hold high ideals. In a sense, we can say that the manager's style of management and way of expressing themselves also steer employees' emotions. There is one more important detail in emotional management that must not be skipped. If you think the manager's duty is limited to managing their own emotions correctly, you are mistaken. The manager also has to understand employees' emotions and manage those emotions too. Clearing up the emotional disagreements experienced within the team, and mediating and mentoring so that employees interact with emotions in a healthy way, is also the manager's duty. For this reason, it will be useful for managers to come together with team members at regular intervals and talk about who is feeling which emotions, how they express those emotions, how the others perceive that form of expression, and how it should essentially be understood.

So what should managers do to manage emotions correctly? A manager should be able to be sincere, smiling and motivating. They should be able to share authority, be an effective listener, and — just as they know how to share success — not lay failure solely on employees. They should be able to recognize their positive and negative emotions well and control themselves in an environment of conflict. They should not restrict time and talents; they should inspire trust, care about informal relationships, attach importance to career training, and be able to reward effectively. They should be encouraging, and able to behave openly and consistently. Do not let this list frighten you — in fact, all of these are already the essentials of a successful manager.

So how will you know you are on the right track in terms of emotion management? As a manager, if you witness your team members expressing their positive or negative emotions openly and constructively, without disturbing the harmony, know that you are on the right track.

Author: Atakan Genç